GALWAY FOOTBALL:ALAN MULHOLLAND faces into his first season as manager of the Galway seniors with a daunting trip to Derry. He has the promise of the younger players he led to last year's under-21 All-Ireland title but also the reality of the county's current status.

His job is complicated by the traditional demands on Galway teams, as reinforced by John O’Mahony’s All-Ireland winning sides, to play a certain type of football with the emphasis on attack and creativity.

In the 11 years since Galway last cut a swathe through the championship, football has changed, with defensive systems and intensified work-rate becoming the first boxes for emerging teams to tick.

It has entered the game’s consciousness that the county is temperamentally unsuited to the new imperatives.

“I know that perception is out there,” he says. “The tradition of Galway playing football is, I would say, an attractive, expansive game and we want to be true to our values. There’s no reason to deviate from that. It’s over-simplistic to say that that’s old hat and gone.

“If you put Pádraic Joyce and Michael Donnellan, Jarlath Fallon and Paul Clancy and Derek Savage into any forward line at the moment, they’d beat Donegal if they were in their prime, regardless of any system Donegal are playing. So we had some fantastic forwards in the past and Kevin Walsh catching ball and giving it to them. We have to replace those players.

“You can talk about systems but one of the reasons a lot of these teams are playing defensive football is that they don’t have Gooch Coopers, Kieran Donaghys and Declan O’Sullivans, so you have to make up for it somehow.

“Either we create fantastic forwards or we change our game plan to try and combat what we perceive as better forwards in the opposition. We would like to play expansive football if we can but we’re not naive enough to think we can go out against Kerry or Cork and spray the ball around and win 2-17 to 3-12.

“It’s horses for courses and I think Kerry are the best example of that at the moment in that they can play it long or play it short. They get more men behind the ball than Donegal sometimes and just because they break fast from defence and they have the tradition of being Kerry footballers it’s glossed over.

“Their template is the one I would love to be able to follow: play what’s in front of you and adapt your own game to what you have to beat and if you have to defend, you can, and if you want to play it open and wide, you’ve got players who are able to do that.”

Those players haven’t been there in recent years. Michael Meehan, the one modern player who would have been sure of a place on the All-Ireland teams, is battling not just for fitness but for his career with an ankle injury that refuses to come right.

Mulholland makes no secret of the fact his under-21s have to take up the slack because the county needs new talent.

“We’re 23 to 1 to win the All-Ireland and I wouldn’t disagree with that price. That’s the problem we have down in Galway. Apathy – we’ve no one going to the games and very little optimism around the place. That’s one of the first things we have to address – getting back confidence from winning games.

“It’s a chicken-and-egg situation. You need a bit of support from the public and positive talk to feed through to the players. We’re trying to generate a bit of that and nothing would be better for that than a win against Derry and a win against Louth. With a bit of momentum we can change the perception of the thing.”

Mulholland has named three debutants for their opening league game away to Derry on Sunday.

Goalkeeper Manus Breathnach from An Spidéal is handed his league debut ahead of Adrian Faherty, while cornerback Keith Kelly and Milltown’s Michael Martin also come in for their first starts.

Mulholland has punted on a youthful midfield partnership with Tom Flynn and Fiontain Ó Curraoin renewing their underage partnership, while Nicky Joyce, Gary Sice and Joe Begin have to be satisfied with spots on the bench.

GALWAY: M Breathnach; C Forde, F Hanley, K Kelly; G Bradshaw, J Duane, G ODonnell; T Flynn, F Ó Curraoin; J Ryan, P Conroy, M Hehir; M Martin, C Bane, D Cummins. Subs: A Faherty, K McGrath, G Sice, D Blake, T Fahy, B Cullinane, J Bergin, C Kenny, N Joyce, JJ Greaney, S Maughan.